Dr. Ella O. Williams

Strength to Carry On recognizes African Americans of all ages who believe that an innermost spiritual power assisted them to become leaders in various walks of life. The personalities reveal an African American heritage rich in spiritual power as a source of enlightenment, strength, and wisdom. Each of us is challenged to begin a spiritual journey towards achieving strong unity in the body of Christ. If you have begun your journey, the essays will inspire you to continue your search for a more glorious life in Christ with a vision of spiritual tranquility, while endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace’ (Eph 4:3)

“I am the blackberry woman who took a chance and made a life out of no life, someone who braved disadvantages and forged ahead, lived, learned, laughed, looked at life, and loved. Little did I know that I was braving the frontier of womanhood.”

Dr. Ella O. Williams is an experienced writer of the social and moral life of African Americans. Her writing experience began during undergraduate work at St. Paul’s College. Later, while studying for a master’s degree at New York University, Dr. Williams wrote many essays and scholarly papers about the life and literature of African Americans. Clark Atlanta University gave her the opportunity to delve more deeply into African American literature, and here she achieved the Doctor of Arts degree at in Humanities.

Ella taught English, African American Literature, and Ethnic Humanities at Pierce College for over twenty-three years. During her tenure there, she began writing about the early experiences of black women growing up on a plantation in America. Her most recent publications are a book of essays, Strength to Carry On, a novel, Blackberry Women, and a reference, The Harlem Renaissance: A Handbook.

Dr. Williams currently teaches English to first-year students at Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, Georgia.

Ella Williams, in Harlem Renaissance, documents talented black poets, novelists, and artists who migrate to New York to record and publish their literary and artistic talents. From 1910 to the early 1940’s are the years when literary talents among blacks explode in Harlem, New York. At no time in American history has such literary and artistic talents ever occurred in African American Literature.

Blackberry Women takes the reader back to the end of the Great Depression to lay open the staggering problems and troubling situations a rural family endures. The action the novel displays might appear more routine than many of us have experienced—that is, until the boundless forces of nature control our lives, too, and compel us to follow the course we set for ourselves, however difficult or complex the journey.

Written by Ella Williams under the pen name Dr. Bronzél Owami, Strength to Carry On is a work designed to inspire and uplift all who read it. A collection of essays with tremendous religious impact, the author sets out to address the difficulties faced by African Americans in past societies and then attempts to offer valuable guidance through religious teaching.